We’re walking through the Village, it’s freezing, and we’re trying to find a place that has both good hot chocolate and is a good place to breast-feed. It’s not easy.

I have nothing to do with the breast-feeding (having no breasts), but I feel responsible for finding the location to do it in. The place should be warm, with comfortable chairs. Somewhere you can hang out awhile, watch people come and go, read. And it should serve thick hot chocolate (which Elise likes).

First we duck into the Grey Dog (which no longer allows dogs – maybe it should be called the Grey Lost Dog or something). The hot chocolate is fine, but the benches are hard. Elise has to throw her legs over the table, then over the table next to us, then on my lap. The baby is agitated. We’re agitated. It’s loud, and everybody’s checking everybody else out. We head back into the cold.

We walk north and on 8th Avenue find Chocolate Bar. It has great hot chocolate; the brownies are unreal. But there’s no place to sit (unless Elise wanted to breast-feed on a stool). Out into the cold.

Doubling back, we stop at Doma on Perry Street. A corner café with wide windows, comfortable seats, a soft atmosphere. But their hot chocolate sucks. We ask for another (feeling bad about it). It still sucks. So we deal. One of us nurses. Two of us sit and read. We stay a few hours. The baby plays with her toys, tossing her rattle at the couple next to us trying to play chess. All is good, almost.

The next day we hit on the perfect solution. After buying a hot chocolate at Chocolate Bar, we walk over to Doma, get a coffee, then nurse and read and throw toys for the afternoon.

Now we’re back home, in California. We’re sitting outside at a café (I’m a bit chilly in my t-shirt, but not it’s not bad). The moon just started rising over the Berkeley hills. I’m writing this. Elise is across from me, reading her book. She’s drinking hot chocolate, the baby’s drinking warm milk.

When I decided to move to the United States for college, I traded my relatively calm and peaceful life in a decidedly “dangerous” country for a different, perhaps more potent danger that haunted me day and night: being a target because of the color of my skin.

Despite my eagerness to come to New York, I was disillusioned my first few months living there. I spent more time in my room than out on the streets I had so romanticized, and which always seemed to disappoint with their dirty pavements. But I’m growing to love New York for what it is rather than for my fantasized idea of it.